FORMS IN ENGLISH HAIKU
KEIKO
IMAOKA

Japanese haiku have been traditionally composed in 5-7-5
syllables. When poets started writing English haiku in the
1950's, they adopted this 5-7-5 form, thinking it created a
similar condition for English-language haiku. This style is
what is generally considered "traditional" English
haiku.

Over the years, however, most haiku poets in North
America have become aware that 17 English syllables convey a
great deal more information than 17 Japanese syllables, and
have come to write haiku in fewer syllables, most often in
three segments that follow a short-long-short pattern without
a rigid structure. This style is called by some
"free-form" haiku. In this essay, I will discuss
the linguistic circumstances that necessitate shorter English
haiku to be more loosely structured than Japanese haiku.

5- AND 7-SYLLABLE RHYTHMS IN THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE

The 5-7-5 syllable rhythm in Japanese haiku is not the
matter of arbitrary choice that it may appear to be to a
non-Japanese haiku writer. Various combinations of 5 and 7
syllables have dominated the Japanese literary scene for most
of its history, tanka (5-7-5-7-7) being the most prominent
example. To most Japanese, words phrased in these
configurations have a remarkably mnemonic, at times haunting
quality, so much so that many war and political propaganda
have utilized this form :

Likewise, many Japanese aphorisms and proverbs as well as
song lyrics, including translations, take similar forms :

owariyokereba(7) subete yoshi(5) : "All's well that
ends well"*

hotaru-no hikari(7) mado-no yuki(5) :

"the light of fireflies, snow by the window"
[lyrics corresponding to

"should auld acquaintance be forgot(8) and never
brought to mind(6)?" in Auld Lang Syne]**

Because of these rhythmic structures, Japanese haiku and
tanka can be memorized with little or no effort, which is one
of the major reasons for the longevity of these literary
forms. On the other hand, there is no such inherent mnemonic
quality to 5-7-5 English haiku, which are indeed difficult to
commit to memory. Moreover, there is no discernible rhythmic
structure to such an arrangement, due to the disparate length
of English syllables. (The mnemonic quality of 5-7-5 Japanese
phrases is much closer to that of metered rhymes in English.)
These factors combined with the fact that English carries
significantly more information per syllable than Japanese
indicate that using the 5-7-5 form does not necessarily
provide an analogous condition for writing haiku in English.

This is not to say, however, that all who write in 5-7-5
should stop doing so. I believe that 5-7-5 English haiku as a
derivative of Japanese haiku has its place in the world of
poetry, just as 5-7-5 Chinese haiku is another such
derivative, seemingly containing about three times as much
information as a Japanese haiku.

THE LENGTH AND FORM OF ENGLISH HAIKU

Today, many bilingual poets and translators in the
mainstream North American haiku scene agree that something in
the vicinity of 11 English syllables is a suitable
approximation of 17 Japanese syllables, in order to convey
about the same amount of information as well as the brevity
and the fragmented quality found in Japanese haiku. As to the
form, some American poets advocate writing in 3-5-3 syllables
or 2-3-2 accented beats. While rigid structuring can be
accomplished in 5-7-5 haiku with relative ease due to a
greater degree of freedom provided by the extra syllables,
such structuring in shorter haiku will have the effect of
imposing much more stringent rules on English haiku than on
Japanese haiku, thereby severely limiting its potential.

THE FLEXIBILITY OF JAPANESE GRAMMAR

There are two major linguistic factors that make the
Japanese language more flexible, and thus easier to fit into
a rigid form such as 5-7-5. Both of these factors derive from
the fact that the grammatical units in Japanese are largely
independent, and are relatively free to move about within a
sentence.

1. RELATIVE FREEDOM OF WORD ORDER

The English language owes much of its grammatical
simplicity to the fact that the word order plays a major role
in determining the relationships between words and phrases
(subject, object, etc.). In such a language, words and
phrases cannot be moved about freely without changing the
meaning of a sentence. For example, within a sentence such as
"Mother gave it to the kitten," the words cannot be
rearranged without altering the meaning.

In the Japanese language, however, because of the
presence of grammatical particles (joshi)*** that are
suffixed to nouns and mark their syntactic relationships,
word units become independent and can be moved about more
freely within a sentence or a clause without affecting its
meaning. As a result, the above sentence can be rearranged in
many ways in both spoken and written Japanese without
altering its core message.

1) haha-ga koneko-ni sore-o ageta mother/to the
kitten/it/gave

2) haha-ga sore-o koneko-ni ageta mother/it/to the
kitten/gave

3) sore-o koneko-ni haha-ga ageta it/to the
kitten/mother/gave

4) sore-o haha-ga koneko-ni ageta it/mother/to the
kitten/gave

5) koneko-ni sore-o haha-ga ageta to the
kitten/it/mother/gave

6) koneko-ni haha-ga sore-o ageta to the
kitten/mother/it/gave

Furthermore, if I were to add the word
"yesterday" to the sentence, the available options
in English would be "Mother gave it to the kitten
yesterday," and "Yesterday, mother gave it to the
kitten." In each of the above six Japanese versions,
however, "yesterday (kinou)" can be inserted
anywhere there is a space (including the beginning of the
sentence), except at the very end, without significantly
altering the meaning, thus multiplying the number of options
by a factor of four. Therefore, "Mother gave it to the
kitten yesterday" can be expressed in Japanese in
twenty-four (6 x 4) different ways. Some of the alternatives
are smoother than others, of course, but the least smooth is
still as natural as "Yesterday, mother gave it to the
kitten." Here, I will only elaborate on #1 to
demonstrate the four possible alternatives.

Mother gave it to the kitten yesterday.

(1) haha-ga koneko-ni sore-o ageta + kinou :

kinou haha-ga koneko-ni sore-o ageta

haha-ga kinou koneko-ni sore-o ageta

haha-ga koneko-ni kinou sore-o ageta

haha-ga koneko-ni sore-o kinou ageta

In other words, noun phrases and many adverbs in the
Japanese language can be placed almost anywhere within a
sentence except that the verbs or verb phrases (including
negations) must come at the end. In more complex sentence
structures than the one in the above example (i.e., two or
more sentences joined by conjunctives), the same degree of
freedom holds within each clause. While one option may be
superior to others in poetic terms, having a multitude of
alternative expressions at one's disposal allows a Japanese
haiku poet far more freedom within the 5-7-5 structure than
is available in English.

Moreover, in Japanese, some of the grammatical particles
and the subject of a sentence can be omitted depending on the
context, which gives the language further flexibility.

2. RELATIVE EASE IN SEGMENTATION

This relative independence of grammatical components also
results in the ease in dividing a phrase into 5-7-5. In the
above example, the six Japanese versions of "Mother gave
it to the kitten" can be segmented anywhere there is a
space. Therefore, if they were to occur within haiku or tanka
(though very unlikely, since they are so unpoetic!), there
are three equally plausible locations each sentence can be
divided, whereas "Mother gave it to the kitten"
offers fewer options. Likewise, in the case of "Mother
gave it to the kitten yesterday," each of the
twenty-four possible Japanese sentences can be divided
wherever there is a space (four locations).

Thus there are more places where a Japanese phrase can be
divided without disrupting its meaning. If English had the
same degree of segmentation flexibility as Japanese, the
following haiku,

across the arroyodeep scarsof a joy ride

Keiko

can be rewritten to approximate the 3-5-3 form as

across thearroyo, deep scarsof a joy ride

without affecting the meaning. As it is, doing so
sacrifices too much in the flow of words and interferes with
the image. Since Japanese haiku are written on one line, with
no spacing between the segments, there is no danger of
disrupting the flow in this manner. It is merely an artifact
borne of the linguistic differences between the two languages
and of the three-line convention of English haiku that makes
the former appear as if it does not have a classic form. The
type of unnatural line breaks seen in the latter is a problem
associated with the 3-5-3 (or other short) form, whereas the
5-7-5 form is long enough to accommodate natural line breaks
dictated by the English grammar, due to a greater degree of
freedom provided by the extra syllables.

Thus we are in a bind, a catch twenty-two. If one wishes
to have the brevity and the fragmented quality of Japanese
haiku in English haiku, 17 syllables are too long. On the
other hand, if a rigid structure is desired, 11 syllables are
too short. One must choose between the two. The choice
depends on which of the two factors a poet considers more
important to haiku. The majority of contemporary
English-haiku poets have let go of the tight forms in favor
of brevity to develop the mainstream North American
haiku.

THE UNDERLYING STRUCTURES OF THE CLASSIC JAPANESE
HAIKU

As demonstrated above, 5-7-5 segmentation is not a
division based on content as we think of it in English.
Strictly in terms of content, the classic Japanese haiku are
composed of two major parts of varying lengths, such as 5-12,
12-5, 8-9, 9-8, 7-10, and 10-7, in the generally decreasing
order of prevalence, with the first two being the most
prevalent. Here are some examples from the great masters
(with a literal translation by the author) :

yuku haru-ya (5) tori naki uo-no me-ni namida (12) -
Basho

spring passing -birds cry, tears in the eyes of
fish

neko-no meshi shoubansuru-ya (12) suzume-no-ko (5) -
Issa

sampling the cat's food -a baby sparrow

ware-to kite asobe-ya (9) oya-no nai suzume (8) -
Issa

come play with me -you motherless sparrow

uguisu-no naku-ya (8) chiisaki kuchi akete (9) -
Buson

uguisu singing - (uguisu : a nightingale-like
bird)with the small mouth open

A close observation of "free-form" English
haiku reveals that they are composed of two major segments.
The majority of them are divided after the first or the
second line and the rest near the middle, and thus they are
in accord with the underlying structures of the classic
Japanese haiku.

In writing short English haiku, the decision as to where
the division falls is based mainly on the dictates of English
grammar and the poetic merits of given expressions. To limit
short haiku to those that can be fitted into a rigid
three-part structure is to severely limit the type of ideas
that can be expressed in this style.

THE MATTER OF KU-MATAGARI (SEGMENT-STRADDLING)

Besides the two linguistic considerations and the varying
underlying structures described above, there is yet another
factor adding freedom and flexibility to contemporary
Japanese haiku. Although a majority of contemporary Japanese
haiku are still written in the classic 5-7-5 form, a
significant number of them make use of what is called
ku-matagari (segment-straddling), where a word straddles two
segments. Many haiku that appear to be, and can be read aloud
as 5-7-5 are actually 7-5-5, 8-4-5, 5-9-3, 5-8-4, etc. This
technique is more frequently used by the poets in the
avant-garde schools, and only those schools seem to allow
more than one straddling within one haiku.****

Although the popular use of ku-matagari is a relatively
recent phenomenon, I have come across some examples in a
comprehensive collection of Issa's haiku. Here is one example
:

dou owaretemo (7) hitozato-o (5) watari-dori (5) -
Issa

hunted mercilesslymigrating birds stillfly over
towns

In English haiku, it is simply not conceivable to break a
line in the middle of a word just to serve the form. The
reason why ku-matagari is feasible in Japanese haiku is
because 5-7-5 rhythm is rooted so deeply in the Japanese
psyche that the readers are able to keep track of the form
despite the lack of a break where one is expected, as well as
because of the aforementioned fact that the Japanese haiku
are written on a single line with no spacing. If they were
written on three lines as English haiku are, there would be
an awkward situation of having to split a word across two
lines.

In short, writing within the rigid structure of Japanese
haiku is made possible by the remarkable malleability and
redundancy of the Japanese language which allows for a
multitude of options in expressing a single thought. In
languages such as English and its relatives whose grammars
are heavily dependent on word order, haiku must and will take
a much different form from that in Japanese. By concerning
ourselves too much with the outward form of haiku, we can
lose sight of its essence.

FOOTNOTES

* owariyokereba(7) subete yoshi(5) : "All's well
that ends well"

Which came first? The Japanese proverb or Shakespeare's?
Who knows? Most likely, they were independently conceived,
since the idea expresses a universal human sentiment.

** hotaru-no hikari(7) mado-no yuki(5) :

"the light of fireflies, snow by the window"
[lyrics corresponding to

"should auld acquaintance be forgot(8) and never
brought to mind(6)?" in Auld Lang Syne] -- two of the
Japanese syllables span two notes.

These are the first words of the lyrics sung to the tune
of Auld Lang Syne by Japanese school kids at the time of
graduation. The lyrics are inspired by an old Chinese poem.
Incidentally, we all grew up thinking this and many other
Western tunes were written and composed by Japanese; i.e.,
Home Sweet Home, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Oh My Darling
Clementine, I've Been Working On The Railroad; the list goes
on. The Japanese lyrics tend to be totally different in
content from that of the original. This is because the lyrics
have been entirely rewritten since literal or even figurative
Japanese translations simply cannot be fitted into the tune.
The Japanese lyrics are well integrated into the tunes, and
are sung with one or more syllable per note.